In a time when even Bridget Jones finds herself in her early fifties, it may at first glance seem unwarranted to speak of the invisibility of ageing women in literary and cultural contexts. In fact, in a review of Mad about the Boy in The Times, Sarah Lyall writes that, "Bridget's amorous adventures … make the prospect of middle age not so bad at all". Constructions like this open up questions about representations of women and ageing. What types of images of the "ageing woman" are created in cultural texts? Do women in later life, in order to become visible, need to find ways to "pass" as younger so that "age shall not wither them" as Kira Cochraine puts it in an article in The Guardian?

On April 10th, the Rhetoric Society, English Graduate Org, and MediaCommons will be hosting a graduate student conference aimed at opening up a discussion of current student research within the Humanities. The conference will consist of a series of roundtables, each led by a scholar specializing in a particular sub-field of the humanities. We will explore the intersection of identity performance and work & play through the following possible lenses:

The turn toward a critical engagement with feeling has given literary studies a new way of reading the relationships between text and its subject, context, and reader. But how does it answer aesthetic questions about form?

English and American Literature Association of the Republic of China (EALA, Taiwan) &National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Originating from old Latin se- ("apart") and cernere ("sift"), "secret" means "hidden, concealed, and private," thereby signifying the distinction between the true and the false, the light and the dark, the self and the other, and the private and the public. This definition has its history and origin, and yet it is questioned and challenged nowadays by post-modernism and post-structuralism, as when Derrida considers in "Literature in Secret," "Pardon for keeping the secret, and the secret of a secret . . . of not meaning at all." If the secret one keeps is a secret "of not meaning at all," unveiling the secret simply reveals its nothingness. And yet, without the endeavor to unveil the secret, how can one know that there is nothing behind it?

With an increasing interest for a globalized and diverse society, the quest for an authentic self is more readily apparent and therefore further conflates the problem of representation. Globalization expands beyond social media and encroaches on the realms of the public and private spheres. However, the process of authenticity only further stabilizes potentially harmful ideologies that promote illusions of truth. In some instances, language (literature), film, and art, because of their figurative element, expose the artificiality of representation and engage the issue of authenticity. How are certain claims to truth (authenticity/referentiality) formulated, regulated, and destabilized through representation in literature, film, and art?

"In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence." ― Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978

"When we (as readers) fill in the gaps that the writer has peppered throughout the book, we form a meaningful bond with the book. We are not just pulling information from it; we're participating in a reciprocal relationship, creating and deriving meaning in an extravaganza of interpretation." — Wolfgang Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology